User blog:RRabbit42/Resolution to problems
Changes on this wiki were made to resolve long-standing problems that have existed for almost a decade. Details about each problem have been provided in other policies and blogs. They are detailed in the Overhaul change list. Since the changes were made without the participation of the members of the wiki, if people want the changes removed, they will need to help develop solutions to all of the problems. Simply saying, "I want it like it used to be" will not be enough. # Edit wars have occurred as people fuss and argue over trying to assign a specific level to a character. # People cannot make up their mind and change the level for the same character multiple times and almost never provide a reason. They are changing it just to change it. ## People make changes to the same character on the same wiki multiple times. Example: saying in November that Randall Boggs is the main antagonist and then in March saying he is the secondary antagonist. This occurs with two or more people and with just one person making the changes ## People contradict what they said before. For example, no one else made any edits to the page for Randall Boggs in between November and March. The person who edited the page in March contradicts what they said in November. ## People contradict themselves across different wikis. Example: saying Randall Boggs is the main antagonist on one wiki on June 6th, then saying just three days later he is the secondary antagonist on a different wiki. # Infoboxes and categories have been used as an excuse not to write anything about the character. Factoids are stuffed into one or both of them at the expense of putting information the main part of the page. ## Infoboxes are meant to be a short summary of the important parts of the character. ## Categories are meant to help organize the page. The larger the number of categories, the less useful they become and the less organized the page is. ## Infoboxes and categories have become like a book that has one sentence and says "Alex is a lion that appears in the Madagascar movies", with a Table of Contents 50 pages long and an Index 87 pages long. A book like this is worthless. ## People often spend most or all of their time updating the Infobox and/or categories at the expense of the rest of the page. # Categories have been added without any proof that they are correct. Categories must be supported by sentences on the page to show they are correct. Other people may not be familiar with the character, so they need to see how each category fits. ## Categories disguised as sentences are not permitted, such as having an "Arrogant" category on the page and a sentence that says "He is arrogant." Sentences must be written to show examples of their arrogance. ## Many categories were added that were one time or temporary situations, such as calling someone a "gunman" simply because they picked up a gun, regardless of whether or not they fired the gun. ## Categories have been added that are trivial and are likely of interest only to a few people, such as "Characters with blue hair". ## Categories have been added for vague, too broad or all-encompassing descriptions like "abusers" and "incriminators". ## Categories have been misused and inflated, such as calling a character a child abuser when no actual abuse took place. # Many pages have had more categories on the page than sentences. Likewise, many pages have an Infobox that is several times longer than all of the rest of the information on the page. Category:Community News blogs Category:Blog posts